This is my second example, photographed early in the morning. Remember, the trick is to set you camera to a three second exposure and touch the branch of the leaves after two seconds of exposure have passed to create this kind of blur.

This weeks exercise requires a little bit of patience. I ask you to go out (early in the morning!) and photograph leaves in a certain way. Put your camera on a tripod and set the exposure time to three seconds at ISO 100. You might have to use a Neutral density filter if you shoot during the day. After framing a group of leaves set the timer to 10 seconds and have a stick ready. Now comes the trick. Press the shutter and get close the leaves with your stick. When the camera exposes the leaves, wait about two seconds and the touch the leaves gently with the stick. You should get an image like this one.

If you or the wind moves the leaves during the three second exposure time you just get an blurry image, but if you let the leaves expose for two seconds and then move them slightly you will get a dreamy image that looks great.

Right besides the Conservatory of Flowers in Gold Gate Park you will find a beautiful flower garden. I snapped this image and converted it to Black and White converting each of the RGB channels into a different layer and finalized the image with NIK Silver Efex pro 2.

I used my very sharp 16mm f2.8 lens to create this image. In post production I edited each RGB channel indivudually, then using layers and NIK Silver Efex Pro to create this final image. And yes, this image is taken in Golden gate Park in beautiful San Francisco.